Corrosion of various apparatus such as metal parts or articles is an issue affecting many industrial applications and processes and costs industry billions of dollars a year. Although corrosion-resistant coatings are currently in use, enhanced performance requires improved coating materials and methods for forming such coating. The rate of corrosion, oxidation and other chemical degradation of available coating materials limits the operation temperature to which coated articles may be exposed, thereby limiting the usefulness of coating in many chemical processing or industrial power generation applications. New coating materials and methods for making such materials are needed in such industrial applications for articles utilized in higher temperature environments, which temperatures in turn improve energy efficiency and reduce net emissions of many industrial processes.
One method utilized to minimize corrosion of metal articles is to increase the articles' corrosion resistance by alloying the articles with different metal additives. For example, the corrosion resistance of nickel-based alloys can be improved by additions of molybdenum and copper and the corrosion resistance of iron-based alloys can be increased by alloying with chromium. Unfortunately, many such metal additives can migrate from the metal article degrading the article's properties and contaminating their environment, undermining usefulness of migration-prone additives in many applications.
Currently, a common method of providing corrosion resistance to metallic articles is to coat the article with a corrosion-resistant material. However, to date such coatings are unable to withstand many common industrial applications. Moreover, coatings are typically applied by chemical vapor deposition processes, which are expensive and cannot be used to coat components with complex shapes. Therefore there is a need for chemically robust coatings and methods for their application.